Key Lime Products

I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in Key Largo with Dave and Susan. Earlier today we drove down to the keys for some diving, hanging out, and of course, some fine key lime products. Susan and I dove with Silent World Dive Center located just a couple miles from Bayside Resort, our hotel. Silent World runs a nice operation with a cap of twelve passengers on their boats. This equates to more individualized attention, a slightly slower and more comfortable pace, and a generally nicer dive experience than diving a "cattle boat" carrying thirty people.

The dive was very nice. It was a shallow reef - we spent most of our time at around 12-15 feet. Looking under overhangs and in the reefs we saw large groups of fish including Angelfish, Parrotfish, and a bunch of other fish I couldn't identify but which looked very cool. One of them, possibly a type of Angelfish, was a cool blue color with electric blue fin tips.

We also saw to barracudas. One of them was just hanging out and we stopped to get fairly close to him. We were a few feet away and he was watching us until we swam off. They're very nice looking fish and it was great to see them.

For dinner we ate at The Fish House which had outstanding fish. I had a shrimp and scallop seafood dish over rice with a key lime sauce which was absolutely outstanding. The lime really made the dish. For dessert we split a piece of key lime pie... yes, it is as good as everyone says it is. If you visit the keys you should not leave without trying it. After discussing it with Dave and Susan, we decided that the only thing to do is to try as much key lime pie as possible so that we can determine who really makes the best. While driving dow the visit a few of the more southern keys, we saw a billboard for "Key Lime Products". Sadly, the place was closed for the night. Nonetheless, it shouldn't be too hard to find the pie. The lady working the resort desk told us that everyone down here, even McDonald's, serves key lime pie...

We'll be heading out for a couple more dives tomorrow which should be great fun. We're going to grab some breakfast at a cool place that we ran across tonight and then head over there... I love the keys.

Vacation - Day One

My first day of vacation was largely spent travelling. I flew from Kalamazoo to Detroit and then from Detroit to Fort Lauderdale. I was fortunate that despite numerous Northwest cancellations, my flights were running as scheduled. The first real glitch came when we were close to landing in Fort Lauderdale. Apparently, there were thunderstorms... resulting in us landing in Miami, spending an hour or so there, and then flying to Fort Lauderdale. We ended up making two runs at the runway because air traffic control tried to squeeze us in for a landing but it didn't quite work out. We pulled up when we were a very short distance above the ground which was a bit dissappointing. Nonetheless, I made it into the airport and recovered my bags before heading over to the Enterprise rental counter.

There was a line at Enterprise but they got me through fairly quickly. Sadly, I then had to wait ten minutes while I waited for someone to actually take me to my car. Once that person arrived there was some confusion about what kind of car I was supposed to get. We worked that out but then the Enterprise guy spent a few minutes trying to upsell me on a more expensive car. At that point I was pretty much done with the travelling and wanted to be done... so he went and spent five minutes finding me an Impala.

I met up with Dave and Susan at The Melting Pot near their place. The food was, as always, excellent. We were considering a nice menage a trois but ended up deciding against. Wait... what are you thinking... Menage a Trois was the name of the wine we were considering. It was a nice blend of three wines... get your minds out of the gutter!

The Melting Pot was a nice way to end the day and it was good to see Dave and Susan. Apparently there's quite a list of restaurants that we're considering so it should be a culinary delight down here.